Them’s fightin’ words

Those three words are at the center of a slander suit that Gloucester attorney Joseph M. Orlando has filed against Boston lawyer Garrick F. Cole.

On Friday, the Appeals Court cleared the way for the suit to continue, overturning a Superior Court’s dismissal of the single-count complaint.

According to the five-page decision, Orlando represented a 17-year-old high school student in 2005 who claimed that she had been sexually assaulted by her basketball coach. The coach, who was unrepresented, approached Orlando, admitted that he committed the act and signed an affidavit describing his conduct. He then went to the police and made a full confession.

A few days later, the decision states, Orlando spoke to two newspaper reporters and gave them a copy of the coach’s affidavit. By now, the coach had hired Cole to represent him. When reporters asked Cole for comment, he responded that “the affidavit is ‘inaccurate,’ and called Orlando’s actions ‘deceitful’ and ‘fraudulent,’” the Appeals Court wrote.

The court ruled that Orlando’s complaint, “indulgently read,” stated enough of a claim to survive a motion for summary judgment.